• Bobby Southworth retained his Strikeforce light heavyweight strap by defeating Anthony Ruiz via unanimous decision. Ruiz beat B-South in their previous bout the previous november, but it wasn’t a title fight. Neither was Southworth’s fight that September against Bill Mahood at the Playboy mansion. It didn’t matter though since he won that fight by verbal submission when Mahood (who later tested positive for steroids) injured his ribs. Southworth, who held the strap longer than any other fighter would lose the belt in his next fight with Renato Sobral. Since then, it has changed hands four times.

• Strikeforce lightweight champion Gilbert Melendez (who won the title by defeating then-champion Clay Guida) lost his title to Strikeforce U.S. lightweight champion Josh Thompson in his second title defense via unanimous decision. After defending the newly-unified title once, Thomson would lose the belt in the rematch the following April. Melendez hasn’t lost since.

Eric Lawson defeated Jesse Gillespie via Submission (Rear-naked choke) at 1:03 of round 1. This fight was delayed until after the main event.

EliteXC put its first foot in the grave 3 years ago.

Why it matters:

An EliteXC planned ShoXC event scheduled for this day in 2008 was inexplicably postponed, signalling that the promotion was possibly in trouble. Although they didn’t give a reaon for the cancellation of the show less than three weeks out, it was reported that they had problems securing the Sycuan Casino and Resort in San Diego, California.

It’s too bad that the show didn’t happen. If it had, we may at least one decent match-up with a fighter that could eventually bolster Strikeforce’s roster.

Hector Lombard was supposed to be on the card, but when the show was scrapped, the up-and-coming Cuban Judoka chose not to fight for the struggling promotion and instead went back to Australia to defend his Cage Fighting Championship middleweight strap in May and September of that year.

A few weeks after the event was put on ice, EliteXC announced during a conference call for its July 26 CBS show that it had downgraded president Gary Shaw’s role to basically that of a consultant with the company.

ProElite Executive Chairman Doug DeLuca put his PR skills to good use when describing the demotion.

“Gary is still very involved with ProElite. Gary and our team from Day One at ProElite basically took MMA at our company from ground zero to a huge network success. So, Gary’s got a lot to be proud of in the MMA world. In the process of doing it, as you can imagine, Gary being from the East Coast and we being a West Coast company, took a lot of time from Gary. He was traveling nonstop. It took a toll on his boxing business, which is very successful, and it took a toll on his family. To some degree, it took a toll on his health.We collectively made the decision that Gary was going to back off a little bit, kind of take a little bit of a relaxed role as far as being involved front and center, which is a good thing for all those three things, for his health, for his boxing business, and for his family,” Deluca explained…sort of. “But Gary is still very much involved, and I still talk to him almost every day. He’s still there. Gary’s interest still lies in EliteXC and ProElite, making it a top organization in the world. That’s the status with Gary.I would say he’s more or less consulting in terms of all his promoter abilities, all his contacts and everything Gary does. So Gary is kind of behind the scenes with us, kind of shaping the direction of the company, the way it’s going, pulling the strings in terms of how we’re going to promote, what we’re going to do. Again, his involvement is very much similar to what it’s always been. The difference is, he’s not going to be front and center, doing all the time consuming stuff that he’s done in the past.”

What a shame…

Ultimate Chaos: Lashley vs. Sapp went down two years ago.

Why it matters:

The event, that was promoted by Prize Fight MMA and Fight Force International, took place in Biloxi, Mississippi at the Mississippi Gulf Coast Coliseum and featured a number of notables including Bobby Lashley, Bob Sapp, Chris Horodecki, William Sriyapai, Gilbert Yvel, Pedro Rizzo and Affliction Clothing CEO, Tom Atencio.

• Sriyapai has not fought since being defeated byfirst-round rear naked choke to Horodecki.

• Rizzo hasn’t lost since being knocked out in the opening frame by Yvel. He is riding a three-fight win streak with “Ws” over Jeff Monson, Gary Goodridge and Ken Shamrock.

• Yvel hasn’t won since beating Rizzo and will now fight under PRIDE rules at Colosseo Fighting Championships July 23 event against Tony Lopez.